tempt no postmasters or secretaries to retard them.  The state of affairs is much altered since my last epistle that persuaded you of the distance of a war.  So haughty and so ravenous an answer came from France, that my Lord Hertford does not go.  As a little islander, you may be very easy:  Jersey is not prey for such fleets as are likely to encounter in the channel in April.  You must tremble in your Bigendian capacity, if you mean to figure as a good citizen.  I sympathize with you extremely in the interruption it will give to our correspondence.  You, in an inactive little spot, cannot wish more impatiently for every post that has the probability of a letter, than I, in all the turbulence of London, do constantly, never-failingly, for letters from you.  Yet by my busy, hurried, amused, irregular way of life, you would not imagine that I had much time to care for my friends@ You know how late I used to rise:  it is worse and worse:  I stay late at debates and committees; for, with all our tranquillity and my indifference, I think I am never out of the House of Commons:  from thence, it is the fashion of the winter to go to vast assemblies, which are followed by vast suppers, and those by balls.  Last week I was from two at noon till ten at night at the House:  I came home, dined, new-dressed myself entirely, went to a ball at Lord Holderness’s, and stayed till five in the morning.  What an abominable young creature!  But why may not I be so!  Old Haslang(554) dances at sixty-five; my Lady Rochford without stays, and her husband the new groom of the stole, dance.  In short, when secretaries of state, cabinet councillors, foreign ministers, dance like the universal ballet in the Rehearsal, why should not I—­see them?  In short, the true definition of me is, that I am a dancing senator—­Not that I do dance, or do any thing by being a senator:  but I go to balls, and to the House of Commons-to look on:  and you will believe me when I tell you, that I really think the former the more serious occupation of the two; at least the performers are most in earnest.  What men say to women, is at least as sincere as what they say to their country.  If perjury can give the devil a right to the souls of men, he has titles by as many ways as my Lord Huntingdon is descended from Edward the Third.

(554) Count de Haslang, many years minister from Bavaria to the British court.-E.

242 Letter 126 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, March 10, 1755.

having already wished you joy of your chivalry, I would not send you a formal congratulation on the actual despatch of your patent:  I had nothing new to tell you:  forms between you and me would be new indeed.